Total Wages

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What were the total wages of a person who worked last week for 40 hours, some of which were compensated at a normal hourly rate and the remainder of which were compensated at an overtime rate?

(1) The number of hours worked at the normal rate was of the total number of hours the employee worked.

(2) The overtime rate was $25 per hour.

Review: Total Wages




Explanation

The wages that we are looking for can be described algebraically as



Where T is the number of hours worked at the normal rate, is the normal rate, and is the overtime rate. We will probably need to get values for all three of these variables to have sufficient information. On to the statements, separately first.

Statement (1) allows us to determine T: it's 30. However, we know neither rate--they could be $1 per hour or a million dollars per hour. Insufficient.

Statement (2) tells us one of the rates, but we don't know the other rate or the value of T in this case. Insufficient.

And when we combine the statements, we still don't know the value of the regular rate. It could be $1 per hour, or $20 per hour, yielding different results.

The correct answer is (E).


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